JANUARY, 1873.]

3

CHAITANYA.

Adwaita Achâriya ishwarer angsa bariya. The teacher Adwaita is a special portion of god. And the author goes on to say that Adwaita was first the teacher then the pupil of Chaita nya. The probability is that Adwaita, like the majority of his countrymen, was more addicted

his home, in the first instance, to Puri to see the shrine of Jagannāth. Thence for six years he

indefinite longings when transfused into the earnest fiery nature of Chaitanya, expanded into a faith which moved and led captive the

roamed all over India preaching Vaishnavism, and returned at last to Puri, where he passed the remaining eighteen years of his life and where at length he died in the 48th year of his age in 1534 A.D. His Bengali followers visited him for four months in every year and some of them always kept watch over him, for he was now quite mad. He had starved and preached and sung and raved himself quite out of his senses. On one occasion he imagined that a

souls of thousands.

post in his veranda was Rādhā, and embraced it

to meditation than to action.

The idea which

in his mind gave rise to nothing more than

His brother Nityanand was now assumed to

so hard as nearly to smash his nose, and to

be an incarnation of Balarām, and took his place as second-in-command in consequence. The practice of meeting for worship and to celebrate

cover himself with blood from scraping all the

skin off his forehead ; on another he walked into the sea in a fit of abstraction, and was

fished up half dead in a net by a fisherman. ings took place in the house of a disciple Sribàs, His friends took it in turns to watch by his and were quite private. The new religionists side all night lest he should do himself some met with some opposition, and a good deal of injury. The leading principle that underlies the whole mockery. One night on leaving their rendezvous, of Chaitanya's system is Bhakti or devotion ; they found on the door-step red flowers and and the principle is exemplified and illustrated goats' blood, emblems of the worship of Durgā, and abominations in the eyes of a Vaishnava. by the mutual loves of Rādhā and Krishna. These were put there by a Brahman named In adopting this illustration of his principle, Chaitanya followed the example of the Bha Gopal. Chaitanya cursed him for his practical gavad Gità and the Bhāgavat Purāna, and he joke, and we are told that he became a leper in was probably also influenced in the sensual tone consequence. The opposition was to a great he gave to the whole by the poems of Jayadeva. extent, however, provoked by the Vaishnavas, The Bhakta or devotee passes through five suc who seem to have been very eccentric and cessive stages. Sánta or resigned contemplation extravagant in their conduct. Every thing of the deity is the first, and from it he passes that Krishna had done Chaitanya must do too, into Dásya or the practice of worship and thus we read of his dancing on the shoulders of service, thence to Sãkhya or friendship, which Murari Gupta, one of his adherents; and his warms into Bátsalya, filial affection, and lastly followers, like himself, had fits, foamed at the rises to Mádhurya or earnest, all-engrossing love. mouth, and went off into convulsions, much Vaishnavism is singularly like Sufiism, the

“Sankirtans” was now instituted; the meet

after the fashion of some revivalists of modern

resemblance has often been noticed, and need

times.

here only be briefly traced.” With the latter the first degree is nását or “humanity’ in which man is subject to the law shara, the second tarikat, “the way’ of spiritualism, the third 'aráfor ‘knowledge,’ and the fourth hakikat or ‘the truth.” Some writers give a longer series of grades, thus—talab, “seeking after god;’’ishk, “love;’ m’arifat, “insight;" istighnáh, ‘satisfac tion;’ tauhid, “unity;’ hairat, “ecstacy;’ and lastly

The young students at the Sanskrit

schools in Nadiya naturally found all this very

amusing, and cracked jokes to their hearts' con tent on the crazy enthusiasts. In January 1510, Chaitanya suddenly took it

into his head to become a Sanyasi or ascetic, and received initiation at the hands of Keshab Bhā

rati of Katwa. Some say he did this to gain res

pect and credit as a religious preacher, others say it was done in consequence of a curse laid faná, ‘absorption.' Dealing as it does with God on him by a Brahman whom he had offended. and Man as two factors of a problem, Vaish Be this as it may, his craziness seems now to navism necessarily ignores the distinctions of have reached its height. He wandered off from caste, and Chaitanya was perfectly consistent in

Soc. Trans. Vol. I. pp. 89 et ...]. Rājendralāla

• Conf. Capt. J. W. Graham's paper ‘On Sufiism,' Bombay Literary

Liter Mittra's valuable introduction to the Chaitanya Chandrodaya (Biblioth, Ind.), p. ii-iv and xv ; also Jones' “Mystical of the Persians and Hindus, Asiat. Res. Vol. III. pp. 165-207; and ‘On the Rosheniah Sect, &c.,’ As, Reg. Wol. XI. pp. 363-428.-ED.

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